realmofadventurefandomcom-20200216-history
Currency
Money first came to be used most ages ago.. People who wanted to trade goods and services gradually realized that exchange would be easier if there were some single commodity that everyone would accept as valuable. Gold, silver and copper form the back bone of most currency systems throughout the world. These three metals have advantages over other kinds of materials. First, they have universal purchasing power. That is, everyone agrees they are valuable. Second, they can be molded into a variety of sizes and shapes to stand for a variety of different values. Third, they are very durable; they will not rust or decay; they can be stored for long periods of time. Fourth, since even small amounts of these metals are valuable, it is easy to carry them around. Although iron is more common (and hence less valuable) it also has an important role in certain economies. Currency is a complicated subject, made more complicated by the fact that most nations agree that currency in one form or another is necessary , but cannot agree on a standard. It is for this reason that there is such diversity in the manner in which nations store and use their wealth. What follows is a description of the major systems of currency in use from the most prominent to the least. The Planes are a big place, and they've got all sorts of things even a blood Prime won't have seen before. Sure, we call our coins different names from Primes, but we've got a lot more currency you just wouldn't believe. Just watch you don't get bobbed by some cross-trader trying to palm off dodgy jink. The rare base metals so often used on the Prime as coinage (gold, silver and the rest) are also the main form of currency in the Cage and most of of the Outlands. Except they're much more varied. In a handful of gold coins, don't expect to find two alike. Sure, the Fated mint their own coins with the Lady of Pain on one side (heads) and Duke Rowan on the other (tails, though the Fated do sometimes argue about that), but you'll find many Prime coins there too. Danters from Amn and Falcons from Sembia rattle alongside Dukes from Bral and Shrikes from the Stellar Main. And then there's the jink minted by Outland burgs, coins from the Realms of various Powers, stuff from lost civilisations, and much more. Who accepts what? Not an easy question. Some 'moralistic' bodies refuse to accept coins of the Lower Planes, but such principled types usually go out of business in the Cage. As a rule of thumb: so longs as it's gold, and a decent size, it'll usually be accepted by merchants. In the infinite planes, the language of jink is one thing that never changes... All That Glitters 'Course, Cagers call their coins different names to Primes. There's no use calling them Ladies or Rowans because most of them ain't. The names Planars do give coins are rather interesting though... Greens (1 cp) Primes call them coppers but out here, they're all green. It's the fiends, see. Their hands turn copper green; its to do with acid sweat or something. Anyway, you're as likely to find an old copper coin tarnished with a green crust as not, so they're known to most as 'greens'. Some cutters (usually Primes) prefer using green copper to the fresh minted coins; they reckon it makes them look exotic and well-travelled. Berks. Stingers (1 sp) A berk'd be right if he said there's a curious paranoia about fiends in the Cage, because they're the root of this name too. Apparently, fiends find silver painful to touch, (or at least some of 'em do), so they usually refuse to use it. It makes sense when you figure that silver weapons hurt them like magic ones. Folks call silver coins 'stingers' and laugh behind the fiends' backs. It's considered very bad form, even dangerous, to pay a fiend in silver, and most folks use alternative coins of similar value if they owe fiends money, such as Grey Ice. Baubles (1 ep) These coins are called electrum by Clueless sods. They're made of an alloy of silver and gold, and consequently aren't very popular with either fiends or aasimon. Many traders won't accept them as payment, and most folk regard baubles as pretty but useless as coins. See, they're also easy to fake, because there's no standard ratio of gold and silver in electrum from the Primes. Only an addle-coved trader would accept 90% silver coins as electrum, and short of melting them down, there's no easy way to tell how much silver (or silver-coloured metal) there is in one. Primes who become touchy about Cagers not taking their money will be politely told they'll be counted the same as silver. Jinx (1 gp) The common name given to gold. This name has two meanings; the first and most obvious is a corruption of the slang term for money: jink. The second is rooted in an ancient aasimon belief that gold is the root of greed and hence an unlucky metal. Also, fiends use it frequently for transactions (partly because they can't use silver), adding to the superstition. Thus, gold is sometimes avoided on the Upper Planes, whose inhabitants use Glitterglass as a substitute. Jinx is both the singular and plural form. Merts (1 pp) Called platinum by the Primes. Merts are so-named after Mertion, the Platinum Heaven on Mount Celestia. As such, Celestians tend to find the term quite offensive; they consider it degrading that something as base as money should be named after such a perfect place as Mertion. Merts are the preferred form of currency for large transactions. Although one mert is a lot of money to most Primes, its easy to find things expensive enough in the Cage to warrant the use of platinum: information, magic, imported equipment, or mercenaries. More Outlandish Coinage It ain't just the names of coins that Primes have to get used to though, berk. There's lots of other ways to pay for things on the Planes, and a cutter'd be smart to wise up to some of 'em: The Sigil Torus Made of gold, the torus is a doughnut-shaped (or Sigil-shaped) coin, with a central hole just big enough to fit an index finger through. They're often worn on strings around the necks of shoppers, out of the sight and reach of pickpockets. A Torus is worth two Jinx in Sigil, but just five silvers outside of the City of Doors (they contain less gold due to the hole, see). The Sigil Möbius This is a rare trade coin used primarily in Sigil, crafted from platinum into a never-ending moebius strip and etched with many runes. Worth 100 jinx, it's primarily a coin of merchants and bulk traders. Few other folk have ever seen one. Nobody knows who mints the Möbius or the Torus, but both are stamped with the face of the Lady of Pain. Some believe the dabus are behind them, but exactly where the minting factory is located is any blood's guess. Lodestone These are the same size and shape as normal coins, but are made of dense lodestone. This means they are magnetic, and readily stick to ferrous metals like iron and steel. This can be to an owner's advantage, as it makes them hard to steal if stuck to a chunk of iron in the owner's pockets, or on the inside of a suit of armour. However, if a berk carries more than one in the same pocket, he should expect them to stick fast together (and he should mind his fingers when they do!) Lodestone bits are also called stickies, and are worth 10 Jinx each. These coins are believed to have originated from the Elemental Plane of Earth, but now many burgs produce their own. Gems One of the more popular forms of currency out on the Planes are gemstones. They're a convenient forms of payment, since they're valuable and small. Thing is, that also makes them all the more attractive to pick-pockets. While on the Prime you'd probably have to sell gems to a specialist jeweller before you can buy things from shops, on the Planes you'll find that most merchants know how to appraise gems themselves, and they'll happily accept payment in them. Gehennan diamonds, Tintibulan opals or Bytopian emeralds; you name it and you'll probably be able to spend it in Sigil's Great Bazaar. Values range from 10 jinx for the smallest gems up to many thousands for perfect specimens. Money Doesn't Grow on Trees (Except in Arborea It doesn't stop there, berk. On planes beyond the Outlands, the currency is still stranger, and all too often those who don't know their onions (or their exchange rates) get short-changed by unscrupulous knights of the post. Whether they're accepted in other Planes depends on the coin, the trader, and how Clueless the buyer looks. Glitterglass These are perfect spheres of glass about half the size of an egg. They glow when light is shone upon them, apparently due to phosphorus mixed in with the glass during minting. After exposure to light, they twinkle with a soft radiance for twice as long as the initial exposure. It's not enough to light up anything else, but it sure looks spooky in the dark. Glitterglass is often minted in Upper Planar Realms, where one sphere exchanges for a gold coin. Rainbows These are tetrahedral-shaped chunks of carved transparent crystal, like four-sided dice. When held in light, they diffract it into a shimmering rainbow pattern of colours. Some are tinted, but all produce a dazzling spectrum. They are usually pure glass, quartz or amethyst, but all are accepted as the same value: five gold each (a Mert). Mages are especially drawn to these 'coins', as they have a couple of other uses. Apparently, if a light or continual light spell is cast into a rainbow, it has the effect of a colour spray spell for an instant before the rainbow pattern dims to its normal brightness. The prism is not harmed. Rainbows can also be used as a material component for the read magic spell. Arcadian Bell Coins Some folks say these coins chime simply because they're beautiful; others reckon it's to warn the owner when thieves are stealing his jink. Whatever the reason, these hollow crystal coins chime if shaken, and every coin carries a slightly different tone. Rattling a handful of them produces a relaxing chorus of sound, so bashers carrying bell coins tend to make soft chiming noises as they walk! Thieves are warned though, because when a basher has a bell coin in his pocket, he's twice as likely to catch any thieves who try to steal from him. Bell coins are used in Arcadia and Fortitude instead of gold and platinum. Those with the value of gold are tinted dark blue (and called, imaginatively, bluebells) while platinum-value bells are light blue and called airs. Pine Coins Seldom seen outside of the wilds of Arborea, pine coins are used only by the petitioners of the Realms of the Elven Pantheon. They're basically silver-tipped pinecones from the towering pine trees of the forests. Instead of going to the trouble of minting coins (which also requires fire - a bad idea if you live in trees), the elves send scouts out to pick the pinecone currency they use. The denomination of the cone depends on its size; tiny cones are obviously worth less than large ones. Ever the conservationists, the elves have outlawed anyone except the scouts from picking cones; if everyone picked their own money, not only would the economy collapse, but no saplings would be able to grow and the forest would eventually die. Some of the tax revenue raised by elven councils is planted to help the forest regenerate. Cone coins are virtually worthless outside Arvandor. Cogs While some coins carry small serrations on their edges to catch sods shaving off gold to make new coins, the coin minters of Mechanus go a step further. Cog coins actually have teeth which can interlock with those of other coins, as if in imitation of the great machinery which fills Mechanus. This makes the illegal practice of coin shaving virtually impossible, and also serves, some say, to remind petitioners of the old adage that money makes the world go around. Cog coins come in all denominations, from copper to platinum and are most commonly found in Mechanus, Automata, Fortitude, Rigus and surrounding areas. Xaos What does one use for money on a plane where nothing lasts? The strong-minded of Limbo can create gold from the chaos soup with merely an act of will, and the weak-minded can just as easily lose their coins in the frenzy of the plane. Anything can be, and frequently is, used as money there. It's not like barter where you swap things of similar value; literally anything you like can be offered as money. A fish, a lit candle, a handful of mud, a chair, anything. Folk don't have to accept it, but if they don't like what you're offering, chances are it'll be different in a few moments anyway. Mind you, so will they, if they're not concentrating! The Root of All Evil The currency of the Lower Planes is a deadly one, and most bashers would be wise to stay away from it. Still, for those curious: Ivory Bits Cut from the bones of the dead, these discs of ivory are frequently encountered in the Lower Planes where they are valued as copper. Ivory also tends to decay less readily to fiends' touches, making it more durable than copper, if more brittle. Some words of warning: those who ask fiends which creature's bones make ivory bits usually find out, and it's a more painful experience than they could imagine! Blood Money These coins are used mainly on Baator and neighbouring planes. There is said to be a mint in Bel's Fortress on the Blood River in Avernus where these foul coins are manufactured. They're basically made of congealed blood drawn from the river. As such, they tend to flake away with use until they crumble to dust completely. Sods using these coins are also warned to keep them away from water, as they have a habit of dissolving, forming little puddles of blood. Bel uses blood money to pay his troops, and the usual exchange rate for it on Avernus and Dis is one copper per blood coin. Grey Ice Used by fiends, grey ice is tungsten metal shaped into rough coins. It's very hard to work, since tungsten is almost impossible to melt. Even in the hottest magical flames it barely softens, so sheer force has to be used to flatten them. One of the main jobs of slaves in fiendish mines is to dig out grey ice with tools which are softer than the metal itself - not an easy task. One ice is usually equivalent to a stinger, no matter which fiendish Lord's image is marked onto the coin. It has been known for tanar'ri high-ups to round up all the ice in a burg and re-mint the coins into their own images. Clueless are warned not to give tanar'ri-minted coins to baatezu, or vice versa, as they tend to take offence. Trouble is, it's often hard to tell one from the other. Acheron Steel From the iron-shod plane of Acheron come steel cubes; small blocks of worked steel with six designs etched onto the faces. These are usually famous battle leaders, the images of Powers or creatures of the plane. On Acheron, steel is a valuable commodity, and cubes are worth the equivalent of gold. Across the rest of the planes however, those who will accept the cubes usually give only silver for them. Soul Prisms Also from the Lower Planes, and especially Carceri, these prisms superficially resemble the Rainbows of the Upper Planes. However, a berk carrying one of these feels she's being watched constantly. That's probably because she is. If you look closely at a Soul Prism, also called a Cage, you can see a tiny face inside; it even seems to scream. It's the trapped soul of an unlucky petitioner. The value of a Cage depends on the power of the soul trapped inside, and can vary from one gold to a thousand or more. Fiends seem to be able to tell a Cage's value on close inspection, though how remains dark - as does the method of their creation. *Souls: The souls of powerful creatures are trapped in gems and the trade in them is brisk on the outer planes, especially in the planar metropolis of Finality on Acheron. Once a soul is in a gem, the gem itself is of little or no value, but the soul goes for 100 gp times the square of the CR of the creature whose soul is trapped (see Tome of Fiends for more information on the use of souls). *Concentration: Ideas take form on the outer planes, and really pernicious or stellar ideas can be so powerful that they take a while to form. In the before-time, they can be found as an amber-like substance that is extremely valued on Mechanus, and by extension every single other outer plane as well. Concentration is actually made out of ideas, and while it looks like a solid object it is actually a liquid that flows so slowly that you could watch it for a year and only a Modron could tell you have far the flow had taken it. A pound of concentration goes for 50,000 gp to an interested party, and can be used in magical crafting by those with the patience to learn its secrets (see Book of Gears for more information on the use of Concentration). *Hope: Hope is funny stuff, it has lots of inertia, but those who carry it are not weighed down in the least. It has mass, but not weight. Even the smallest piece of Hope sheds light like a daylight spell (the effective spell level for this effect is 7, and Hope can overcome almost any darkness). Hope is measured in kilograms rather than pounds, and a kilo of Hope goes for 100,000 gp to those who want it, and it can be used in magical crafting (see Tome of Virtue for more information on the use of Hope). *Raw Chaos: The plane of Limbo is filled with possibility and change. Usually this manifests as a continuous creation and destruction that is awe inspiring and terrifying at the same time. Sometimes, for whatever reason this possibility doesn't become anything, and just stays as Raw Chaos. Raw Chaos can have any dimensions and any amount of mass, but from a practical standpoint you either have it or you don't. If you have Raw Chaos and someone else doesn't you can give it to them, and it is generally considered good form for them to give you magical items or planar currency worth 200,000 gp in exchange. Raw Chaos can be transformed into magical items by those with the correct skills (See Tome of Tiamat for more information on the use of Raw Chaos). Sigilian Currency Exchange Sigil, and most of the Planes, use their own monetary system which is different from the Prime Material Plane's. Prime characters will be unaffected by this switch - starting gear is purchased as normal. However, they will then have problems once they get to the Planes and attempt to purchase additional equipment. It should be noted that certain areas of the Planes will have their own local monetary system which will take precedence over this system (Larvae in the Lower Planes, for example). Coin (abr) Nick Exchange Worth on Prime Physical Description Soul (s) Fodder n/a 1s = 1cp A simple 1'' diameter copper disk inscribed with the Lady of Pain's symbol on one side (2 grams).'' Infernal (i) Bloody 1i= 3s 1i = 10cp A 1'' diameter coin made out a permanently rusting metal; gives the appearance of being covered in dried blood. Feels warm to the touch (3 grams).'' Cage © Cage 1c = 5i 1c = 5sp A 1.5'' diameter silver ring with 4 crossing silver bars inside, thus resembles a barred window (10 grams).'' Divine (d) Glow 1d = 10c 1d = 3gp A 1'' diameter sphere made from a white marble; glows with a faint light when touched. Feels cool to the touch (10 grams).'' Lady(L) Lady 1L = 15d 1L = 20gp A massive, 1/8" thick, 3'' diameter gold disk with the Lady of Pain's symbol inscribed on both sides (120 grams).'' 1 Lady = 15 Divines = 150 Cages = 750 Infernals = 2250 Souls Category:Economy